Intermittent fasting, and fasting in general, has been a popular fad health gimmick, but the science isn't on its side. Instead, proponents believe mice are little people so if mice weaned on starvation diets lived longer, people would also.
Several studies have demonstrated that the primary active constituent of cannabis, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol induces transient psychosis-like effects in healthy subjects similar to those observed in schizophrenia. However, the mechanisms underlying these effects are not clear.
A new study reports that delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol increases random neural activity, termed neural noise, in the brains of healthy human subjects. The findings suggest that increased neural noise may play a role in the psychosis-like effects of cannabis.
Researchers of Leuven University and VIB in Belgium have shown that the yeasts used to ferment cocoa during chocolate production can modify the aroma of the resulting chocolate. "The set of new yeast variants that we generated makes it possible to create a whole range of boutique chocolates to match everyone's favorite flavor, similar to wines, tea, and coffee" says Dr. Jan Steensels, one of the lead researchers involved in the project. The results were published November 20 in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, a publication of the American Society for Microbiology.
Looking for robust yeast strains for chocolate production
Researchers have developed power paper; a new material with an outstanding ability to store energy. The material consists of nanocellulose and a conductive polymer and one sheet, 15 centimeters in diameter and a few tenths of a millimeter thick can store as much as 1 F, which is similar to the supercapacitors currently on the market. The material can be recharged hundreds of times and each charge only takes a few seconds.
ATLANTA--Activating receptors in the brain for the body's hunger hormone increases food-related behaviors, such as gathering, storing and consuming food, a finding that has implications for the treatment of obesity, according to researchers at Georgia State University.
Their study suggests that stimulating brain receptors for ghrelin, a hormone that increases appetite, by injecting ghrelin into the brain is necessary and adequate to increase appetitive and consummatory behaviors in Siberian hamsters. However, activating ghrelin receptors in other parts of the body isn't required to achieve these food-related behaviors.
The researchers also found that blocking brain receptors for grehlin neutralizes the hormone's effect on food intake.
In 1048 prostate cancer patients previously treated with docetaxel and 996 metastatic, castration-resistant patients, treatment with the androgen-lowering drug abiraterone acetate (Zytiga) led to longer overall disease control, even when a very high Gleason score indicated especially aggressive cancer. Results recently published in the Annals of Oncology show that for patients with Gleason score greater than 8, post-docetaxel treatment with abiraterone extended progression-free survival from 5.5 months to 6.4 months, and pre-chemotherapy abiraterone treatment extended progression-free survival from 8.2 months to 16.5 months.
MANHATTAN, KANSAS -- Kansas State University researchers have developed a new testing method to help millers assure wheat flour purity that will meet baking industry standards and consumers' expectations.
The test introduces sophisticated molecular methods that focus on high, endosperm purity in flour extracted from wheat kernels.
"We are helping the miller by measuring the endosperm purity for flour streams coming from each stage of the milling process," said Mark Boatwright, a Kansas State University doctoral candidate in biochemistry and molecular biophysics from Runnels, Iowa. "This will allow the miller to optimize settings on equipment and make decisions to meet the baker's specifications for quality flour."
Dave Goulson’s latest anti-pesticide study is sure to thrill his activist backers. The University of Sussex biology professor has a new study concerning declining butterfly populations in the UK, which he claims “adds to the growing mountain of evidence that neonicotinoids are one of the causes of these declines.” It’s yet another case of the headlines not matching reality.
Autism spectrum disorder is a group of social and neurodevelopmental disorders that include difficulty with interpersonal interaction, communication and excessive repetitive behaviors. Currently, though there are medications to treat some symptoms but no drug therapies exist to treat the underlying disorders.
Treating mice with a compound called SR1078 showed reduced autistic behavior in the mouse analog of autism, according to Thomas Burris, Ph.D., chair of pharmacology and physiology at Saint Louis University, by increasing the expression of genes known to be low in the brains of autistic patients.
Researchers have managed to 'pluck' a single photon, one particle of light, out of a pulse of light.
Though more urbanization has been linked by activists to better environment and various other social engineering desires, science has instead demonstrated the benefits of contact with nature for human well-being.
Rather than criticizing rural life while lobbying for more spending on city green spaces, it makes more sense to talk about just getting people out of the city mentality. For a paper in BioScience, scholars used nationally representative data from the United Kingdom and model testing to examine the relationships between objective measures and self-reported assessments of contact with nature, community cohesion, and local crime incidence.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been colliding protons at record high energy since the summer, but now the time has now come to collide large nuclei (nuclei of lead, Pb, consist of 208 neutrons and protons).
Representatives from more than 190 countries will travel to Paris next week in emissions-belching vehicles to dine on five-course meals and talk about creating a process to reduce greenhouse gases over time. Then 170 of them will ignore it while the ones with few CO2 emissions will claim they are doing their part.
An economics paper in Science estimates that the Paris pledges can reduce the probability of the highest levels of warming, and increase the probability of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, if they are implemented and numerical models are accurate.
